


to my father's house

by batshape



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: 'loved not the sons of finarfin' okay BUT, Gen, arafinwean foresight, eventual and inevitable character death, ruminations on death as it gets progressively closer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29253210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batshape/pseuds/batshape
Summary: “Emmë says that I did not cry when I was a babe,” replied Findaráto, and Carnistir remained silent. His parents had said no such thing about him.:Caranthir and his cousins, until death.
Relationships: Caranthir | Morifinwë & Finrod Felegund | Findaráto, Caranthir | Morifinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo
Comments: 7
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> and when my span of years  
> has danced out its dance —  
> the path will be spread with a million bloodstains  
> leading to my father's house
> 
> — cloud in trousers, vladimir mayakovsky

In the grand, grim halls of Mandos, there was the sound of running footsteps.

Carnistir was not quite sure how this worked. He had not quite decided on the mechanics of sound without a body, of impact without a body—did a  _ fëa  _ have weight, anyway? he would have to ask his ammë when he saw her next—and he was torn between explanations. Perhaps a  _ fëa  _ sundered from its  _ hröa  _ maintained some of its bodiliness in the time it took for one to meet with Namo and sort the circumstances of one’s stay in the halls, and steadily lost it the longer it stayed sundered. Perhaps the weight was a kindness of the Vala, to allow for adjustment to new houselessness, and it would diminish with perfunctory adaptation to one’s state of being.

Or perhaps Morifinwë Carnistir was dreaming, and this was not a question which had any grounds in reality, and it should have been disregarded immediately on this basis.

(Carnistir was not certain. He was quite young, and furthermore had never excelled at catechisms.)

The footsteps grew louder, and came faster. Carnistir realized that he was quite nervous for the arrival of these footsteps, suddenly; to feel pursued was one of his least favorite feelings, for Carnistir was yet fairly small and could typically be outstrided by any slightly elder brother who wished him some amusing ill. He began to search for signs of such a pursuit: a familiar braided whip of silvery pale hair, a thumping tail, mud fingerprinted on door frames. The running came louder.

“My lord!” Carnistir looked round, looked wild, but certainly this unseen speaker did not mean  _ him,  _ for Carnistir was no lord of anything yet. He was very young for lordship. In any case,  _ prince  _ was his title, and he liked that one well enough most of the time. “My lord! An announcement.”

_ Of course _ , Carnistir thought to reply, before he decided better than to speak. He felt a tightness in his chest, an inhale before a sob, and he began quite tremulously to count the ten fingers on his two hands. (This was ammë’s method for avoiding crying in situations which did not necessarily require crying. Carnistir found it effective roughly fifty percent of the time.)

“My lord!” Carnistir thought there was not likely so much shouting in the real Halls of Awaiting. He did not think Namo would stand for that sort of thing. Regardless Carnistir looked up—perhaps they  _ were  _ addressing him after all, he decided—and met his own gaze.

“My lord!” repeated the heavy-treading soul with his face and not-quite his voice. There was something dripping smeared across his cheek. Something dark spilled from his mouth. “My lord, Morifinwë Carnistir is dead!”

Carnistir woke crying.

:

The plight of Morifinwë Carnistir in his younger days was thus: when he spoke, he had very important things to say, but it was when he cried that he was paid the most attention.

He had been lifted against his brother’s chest, and Maitimo was bouncing him somewhat boredly in his arms. (Carnistir was too old to be bounced like a babe, he thought, but to protest this seemed like too much effort with so much of it already diverted to his crying, and the gentle rhythm was not unpleasant.) His brother Tyelkormo had been banished to a wooden chair much too tall for him and bade to reflect in silence on his wrongdoing; he was now swinging his legs sullenly back and forth, and seemed disinterested in penance.

“Moryo _started_ it,” Tyelkormo insisted. “ _Nelyo._ It’s not fair that _I’m_ the one in trouble. He bit me first—I can show you the marks—”

Calculatingly, perhaps, Carnistir began to cry more loudly. Tyelkormo made a noise of righteous indignation.

“I could cry too,” he said, crossing his arms petulantly. “I could, and I would, if I was a  _ baby—” _

“Tyelkormo.” Maitimo pressed one of his hands to Carnistir’s hair. Carnistir dampened the crook of his brother’s neck with mostly genuine tears. “I would be more inclined to believe you, if we did not have this same argument every other day.”

“I am being unfairly represented,” declared Tyelkormo. Maitimo made a slight noise which may have been of amusement.

“This is no court of law,” he pointed out. “Though if you demand a trial, I could very well call  _ atya  _ in to hear your complaints—”

“That’s alright,” Tyelkormo resolved quickly. Maitimo hummed, as if he had thought so.

“In any case,” he said. “You are not even in very much trouble. Has it not been ten minutes already?”

“Oh.” His demeanor changed perceptibly at this mercy. Cheerfully, Tyelkormo slid off the chair. “Then I can leave?”

“The last I saw Kano, he was headed for the birch path.” Maitimo tilted his head to the door. “If you hurry, you can likely catch him.” There was further amusement in his voice. “If he complains, then tell him I said you could come along.”

The invocation of an elder brother’s authority in Tyelko’s favor—in addition to a freely-given license to be a nuisance—was more than sufficient motivation to vacate their company. The bedroom door had opened and then closed again more quickly than Carnistir could register the first click of the latch, and from beyond the barrier there was the familiar sound of a head lifted from crossed paws, scrabbling nails, and running bare feet.

Maitimo sat Carnistir in the newly abandoned chair and knelt before him. “Moryo,” he said, with another soft hum. “Would you like to tell me what is the matter?”

Carnistir sniffled. Now that he was no longer being bounced to a gentle rhythm of his brother’s choosing, nor crying into the slope of his brother’s neck, he was realizing his embarrassment with the whole affair. Carnistir was much too old for that sort of behavior—both the crying and the bouncing, he decided firmly.

Carnistir scowled. His brother sat back on his heels, to better level his gaze with Carnistir’s own, and smiled genuinely.

“There are few excuses for provoking fights like that, Moryo, especially when you know before you begin that you are going to lose.” Anticipating Carnistir’s protest, he raised a hand. “I know how Tyelkormo can be. Had he upset you so much, that you found it appropriate to fight him right before the door to ammë’s studio?”

Carnistir ceased to scowl. He swept at his running nose with a clumsy hand. “No,” he muttered. “Didn't have anything to do with Tyelko.” 

“Hm.” Maitimo took a gentle hand through Carnistir’s messy hair. Tyelkormo had attempted to tear a fistful of it free in their rolling and snapping quarrel, and what grime and treaded dirt had previously existed on the hallway floors had also been collected there, transforming the deep black of Carnistir’s hair into a dusty charcoal. “So why are you upset?”

Carnistir rubbed at his eyes with a fist. Presented now with an opportunity for confession, an audience for spilling his grievances, he did not know what to say. He felt that, as with crying and being held and being bounced, Carnistir had surpassed an age in which he could ascribe his punishable behavior to  _ bad dreams. _

“Don’t know,” he muttered. Maitimo tilted his head to the side.

“I see,” he said, though Carnistir noted privately that he did  _ not _ see, actually, for he had not told his elder brother anything at all enlightening. “I am due to Arafinwë’s house within the hour, to return those.” Maitimo gestured at the desk behind Carnistir, the dark surface of which was nearly invisible beneath a heaping pile of opened books and notebooks. “Ammë and atya will be busy until supper, and I confess that I do not want to be here when Tyelkormo and Makalaurë return on the heels of some presently unimaginable disaster of their own making.”

Carnistir was not sure what could go wrong on the birch path that would be so catastrophic as what Maitimo appeared to fear. The most terrible outcome, he thought, was that one or both of them might fall into a pond, and Makalaurë would spend suppertime complaining endlessly about the affront to his hair and his harp, while Tyelkormo dumped a slippery mess of pond weeds which he had hidden up his sleeve in their father’s lap so that he might help Tyelkormo identify them. (This, of course, had happened before. The weed had been swiftly identified as hornwort, and then delivered calmly back into Tyelkormo’s cupped hands.)

“Would you like to accompany me?” Still settled on his heels, Carnistir’s brother tilted his chin and smiled again. “We might stop at that patisserie you like on the way, if you want.”

And Carnistir had a fondness for pastries, well-known in the household and used often to the advantages of mother, father, and older brother alike. It was likely that, in the event of bribery by pastry, Carnistir would do most anything, including carrying by himself eight bound monographs of varying size through the city to the Tirion residence of Arafinwë, with whom his brother would spend at least an hour debating the truth and merit of each particular treatise. (This, too, had happened before.) 

Carnistir tipped his gaze to the ceiling, and did not scowl as he considered the task.

“Ammë is just as likely to put you to work if you remain,” Maitimo reminded him helpfully. “And you will likely receive no pastries as her sculptor’s assistant.”

“You might go to and from Arafinwë’s house, and bring me some on your return,” Carnistir pointed out, and Maitimo laughed. He stood, and as he did Carnistir also slipped from the tall chair onto his feet.

“I might,” he said. “You are becoming a fair hand at negotiation, Moryo.” Maitimo set about closing and stacking the books on his desk, for the most part leaving the notebooks where they laid except in cases in which it was necessary to shove them from atop a requisite text. When he did so, the whisper of loose leaf sliding from between the notebook pages and onto the floor accompanied the action. “But suppose I forget your pastries on my return trip, or I while away the hours discussing governance with our half-uncle, and by the time I depart, your patisserie has closed for supper?”

“Then I would call you dishonest and a cheat,” declared Carnistir archly, though he knelt beneath his brother’s desk and began to collect the fallen papers without any real animosity. His brother hummed.

“And perhaps I would deserve it,” he said. “But you would recognize the risk of a weak contract then, wouldn’t you?”

“So I will come,” Carnistir decided, as he sat back on his heels irritably and arranged the collected pages into a passable sheaf. “Will you buy me pastries or not?”

Again, Maitimo laughed, a clear and happy sound which warmed the points of Carnistir’s ears for the knowledge that it was at his expense. He scowled.

“I will,” promised Maitimo, and he accepted the proffered sheaf from Carnistir with a grateful nod. “If pastry is the steep price of your company and your affection, Moryo, I suppose I have no choice but to pay it.”

“I did not promise my affection,” protested Carnistir, though he was pleased, for he was quickly taken in by any discussion with his eldest brother that engaged Carnistir as something like an intellectual opponent. 

His brother looked at him in amusement, and then retrieved a book bag from the floor beside his desk and began filling it with Arafinwë’s texts. He made no reply, which very well might have meant that Carnistir had won their little battle of wits with this last point.

When Maitimo bowed his head, Carnistir preened.

:

Maitimo did not employ Carnistir to carry anything beyond the pastries. The bakery was the first stop on their journey by foot, and of Carnistir’s professed favorites Maitimo bought a half dozen. The Vanya girl who most frequently worked the counter took her time in the wrapping of each, and while she did so she inquired about their errand.

“Fine weather for a walk,” she hummed. Her golden hair was braided close to her scalp until midway back her head, from whence her hair was let loose in a bright halo of curls about her face. She looked sweetly at Carnistir’s brother. “Going anywhere in particular?”

Maitimo set a hand on his bag. “Returning a few books,” he answered amiably. He tilted his head in a way that might have been conspiratorial. “The sweets are a bribe,” he confessed with a smile, “that I might have some company on my way.”

“I see.” She looked at Carnistir with somewhat less interest than she had his brother. “In that case, I do hope you enjoy them.” Her hands lingered on the package as she passed it over the counter.

On the street, Carnistir peered into the pastry bag appraisingly. “She gave us seven,” he announced, while his brother strode ahead. “You paid for six.”

“Curious,” replied Maitimo, sounding somewhat less curious and more amused. “I wonder why she might have done that.”

Carnistir narrowed his eyes. Maitimo halted at the corner to allow him to catch up, and then held out a hand to him. “Give me the seventh then,” he said. “And save three, if you don’t mind, for Arafinwë’s house.”

Carnistir placed his least coveted of the seven pastries into his brother’s open palm. He removed another from the bag for himself and ate it contemplatively on the way. The satisfaction of having received his promised sweets had succeeded in distracting him from the memory of the bad dream only temporarily; now that he trailed along at a slight distance from his brother (for Maitimo was tall enough that even at a much reduced pace he outstrode half-grown Carnistir easily), his thoughts returned to it. 

His fingers were sticky with honey and flaky pastry by the time they arrived to Arafinwë’s Tirion residence. Of his allotted sweets Carnistir had eaten all three, and he did not regret this strategy upon their arrival. 

Waiting for them on the third step from the top was Carnistir’s slightly elder cousin Findaráto, bouncing on the tips of his toes. He waved a hand excitedly to them in greeting. Maitimo turned to Carnistir with a nod at the paper pastry bag.

“Share the rest of those,” he bid, and Carnistir failed to suppress his scowl. “I promised them on my last visit, and it seems they have been eagerly anticipated.”

Carnistir was glad he had eaten his favorites on the way. He followed Maitimo up the steps (slowly, dragging his heels intentionally as much as he was falling behind by nature of his shorter stature), and greeted Findaráto only with a nod.

“You are late,” Findaráto declared with an air of feigned disapproval, and Maitimo laughed.

“I think we are right on time,” he countered. “And I believe your father would agree.”

“I have been waiting for quite some time,” said Findaráto uncertainly. Maitimo clicked his tongue against his teeth.

“I imagine you had better things to be doing,” he replied, and looked meaningfully to Carnistir. Sullenly, Carnistir passed over the remaining pastries and said nothing. “Where is your father?”

“Waiting for you,” said Findaráto. “With tea.”

“And were you sent to receive me?” Maitimo retied the embroidered sash about his own waist with quick fingers. Carnistir was looking resolutely above his cousin’s head.

“No,” replied Findaráto cheerfully. “I am escaping a lesson.”

“I see.” Maitimo took a hand once through his copper hair; his fingers snagged in a curl and he did not wince. “Would you like to keep Moryo company while you do so?”

Carnistir looked sharply to his brother. He did not require  _ company,  _ nor did he care for Maitimo asking his half-cousin if he would provide it like it was a favor on Findaráto’s part. Carnistir did not need  _ tending,  _ especially not from a cousin at the most two years his senior.

But Findaráto shrugged, opening the paper bag of pastries, and hummed affirmatively. Maitimo was already up the rest of the steps, and Carnistir could not hope to outpace him even if he could afford the humiliation of being delegated to Findaráto’s care a second time.

Findaráto imparted to him a friendly grin. He produced a pink little custard-filled cake from the bag and offered it to Carnistir wordlessly. Carnistir accepted it with a frown, and realized with horror that as Findaráto started down the stairs, Carnistir was already taking thoughtless steps to follow.

“Mathematics,” Findaráto said unbidden, once they had reached the last step, and he plucked a sugar-dusted dessert from the paper. “I climbed out the window.”

“From which floor?” Carnistir asked through a mouthful of cake, before he remembered that he was meant to be bitter about his assignment to Findaráto’s supervision. His face warmed.

“Third,” said Findaráto blithely, and Carnistir snorted.

“Liar,” he declared. “Not without earning a broken arm you did not.”

“Hm.” Findaráto’s smile was radiantly bright. “Then perhaps it was only the first.”

“Or perhaps you walked out the door and down the hall,” Carnistir said, for it seemed plain to him that this was the easiest course of action. “You have already demonstrated yourself to be a liar.”

Findaráto shrugged. “Perhaps,” he said, and finishing his dessert he peered into the bag and hummed, then offered the thing to Carnistir. Carnistir considered taking it solely to deprive Findaráto of the final sweet, and then thought better of eating five pastries at an hour so quickly approaching suppertime. He shook his head.

Findaráto was leading him around the house and to a well-tended stone path. Living past the edges of the city center as his father did, their Tirion house was positioned at the forefront of a reasonably sized wooded green, somewhat smaller than the birch path near the bottom of the hill which Carnistir’s brother Makalaurë frequented to practice the finer points of his tale recitation.

“I dreamt last night that one of Nessa’s hinds was wandering here,” Findaráto explained in hushed tones, and Carnistir’s mood soured again at being reminded of dreams. “And you know, seeing as sometimes dreams turn true, I thought I might check.”

Despite the uneasiness in the pit of his stomach, Carnistir sneered. “A hind, lost in Tirion proper? Do you think that it failed to notice when the underbrush turned to white brick beneath its feet?”

Findaráto lifted his shoulders. “I do not know,” he said. “Perhaps it is a sign.”

“A sign of what?”

Evidently Findaráto did not know this either. He chewed on the inside of his cheek.

“My mother is having a baby,” Findaráto said. “I do not know anything about babies.”

“They cry most of the waking hours,” Carnistir said, for that was his best assumption about their nature. “And I think some of the sleeping ones.”

“Emmë says that I did not cry when I was a babe,” replied Findaráto, and Carnistir remained silent. His parents had said no such thing about him.

Crossing into the line of trees, Findaráto cast his gaze upward. A raven croaked its indignation, whether at their intrusion or at being spotted, Carnistir could not be certain; there was the heavy sound of wings as it vacated its post.

They found no red hind of Nessa in the copse, though Findaráto appeared no less cheerful for this. He sat in the brush, and gestured for Carnistir to do the same. Quietly, he did, and relative stillness settled about them. Perhaps Findaráto intended to coax the imaginary hind from the trees with silence.

“Is it common?” Carnistir asked instead. He did not particularly want to find one of Nessa’s blessed creatures in the copse; if it was lost, the task might befall Carnistir and his cousin to return it, and Carnistir cared not for that responsibility. “For a dream to turn true?”

Findaráto hummed. “Common enough, I think,” he said. “Most mothers experience foresight, you know.”

Carnistir’s mother had named him  _ red-face _ , a title which had required no foresight in the giving. The purplish-red stain which spilled permanently across his left cheek felt particularly obvious, in the light of this comment.

“My dreams come true, sometimes,” Findaráto said. “Atta says that makes sense to him—he has foresight, though he rarely speaks of it.”

“Why?” Carnistir demanded. Findaráto looked at him in bemusement.

“Why what?” he asked, and lifted a hand to tug on one of his flax-colored curls. His hair was similar to that of the Vanya girl who worked the patisserie counter; it was unbraided, but it bounced in cheerful coils when he turned his head. “Why does he not speak of it?”

Tightly, Carnistir nodded. Findaráto shrugged.

“I do not know,” he said. “I think sometimes it is not pleasant to talk about.”

Carnistir thought to remark that unpleasantness was a stupid reason to allow something important to go unsaid. He did not do so. (For perhaps that would have been hypocritical of him.)

“I had a bad dream last night,” he confessed instead. “But I do not know anything about foresight.”

Findaráto broke the last pastry in half and offered Carnistir the left piece. Carnistir shook his head. “What did you dream about?” Findaráto asked with a tilt of his head. Carnistir shifted against the twigs and stones on which he sat.

“I was in the Halls of Awaiting,” he confessed, and as he did so he scrutinized Findaráto for any signs of mockery or amusement. There were none; Findaráto licked the honey from his fingers with a neutral listening expression. “I think that I was made to announce my own death.”

Still, his cousin regarded him without mockery. Findaráto said, “I have never known anyone who has died.”

“Not personally,” Carnistir agreed quietly, and he wanted to tip back his head to avoid his cousin’s gaze. It was quite serious now. He felt the need to fidget. “I thought that maybe—it was a sign.”

“A sign of what?” Findaráto echoed. Now his mouth twisted, and Carnistir could not read the emotion in it.

He shrugged. Looked askance. “I do not know.”

There was a slight touch—gentle squeezing pressure—on Carnistir’s shoulder. Findaráto said in a soft voice, which he likely thought made him sound quite sage: “Often, Morifinwë, dreams are only dreams.”

And wordlessly, Carnistir turned again to look at him. Then Carnistir drew back his fist and punched his cousin squarely in the mouth.

There followed a scuffling then; Carnistir had struck Findaráto fiercely enough to split his lip, though not enough to knock him on his back, and before Carnistir could scramble to his feet, his cousin had launched himself at his face. Carnistir and Findaráto both went rolling in the brush, Carnistir gasping at one moment as nails raked across his face, Findaráto snapping his teeth in unpleasant surprise at another as Carnistir kicked him weakly in the belly. The fight ended as suddenly as it began: Findaráto, having pinned Carnistir quite easily on his back, punched him in the nose even while Carnistir tried fruitlessly to get a grip on Findaráto’s neck.

Carnistir gasped, and to his abject dismay tears welled in his eyes. Findaráto had one of his knees in Carnistir’s ribs; as Carnistir began to cry, he removed it.

“Why did you do that?” Findaráto demanded still, touching a fingertip to his bloodied lower lip investigatively. His eyes flashed with a briefly bright anger. “I was being  _ kind.” _

Carnistir swiped at his tears. There was blood trickling from his nose, and he swiped at that too. “You condescended,” he snapped. “Have you broken my nose?”

Findaráto’s face appeared above him. His unbound hair burned gold in the filtered treelight. “No,” he said authoritatively. “Though you are bleeding.”

“I know that.” Carnistir sniffed, and tasted blood at the back of his throat. He thought to lie on his back a while longer; he closed his eyes and silently counted the ten fingers on his two hands.

They sat in silence for some time. After several minutes Carnistir opened his eyes and observed the leaves in the canopy above them. Findaráto was now sitting cross-legged beside him. He did not look at the trees above.

“You should apologize,” he said to Carnistir. “You ought to apologize when you do wrong.”

“You first,” demanded Carnistir insolently. His cousin frowned.

“No,” he replied. “You started it.”

And Carnistir had lost it too. He wondered if that meant he owed Findaráto two apologies, for daring to waste his time.

The raven had returned. It observed Findaráto and Carnistir with a shrewd black gaze, as if it had watched from afar and found their brief scuffling distasteful.

“Sorry,” Carnistir muttered, unsure whether he intended the apology for his cousin or for the bird. Findaráto hummed appreciatively regardless.

“Your brother will expect you back,” he said, suddenly good-natured again. “What will you tell him about your nose?”

“The truth, I suppose,” said Carnistir sullenly. He caught his cousin’s anxious expression. “But only after we have left.”

“I see,” said Findaráto, and then: “Sorry.”

“You do not mean it.”

Findaráto lifted his chin. “You do not know whether I mean it or not.”

Carnistir supposed this was true. It occurred to him that the tendency toward uncoerced apology might be a virtue. (It also occurred to him that it was no virtue which Carnistir had any intentions to adopt in the near future.)

He stood, and wiped the thickening blood from his nose on his sleeve. He offered his half-cousin his unbloodied hand, and lifted Findaráto to his feet.

:

“If you hurry, you might squeeze in a third fight to lose before supper,” said Maitimo breezily on the walk home. Alleviated of his heavy books, he was carrying Carnistir on his shoulders, and despite his creeping suspicion that Carnistir should recognize this mode of transportation as some sort of indignity, he was enjoying the elevated view. He did not even frown at the jest at Carnistir’s own expense.

“Who said that I lost?”

“Hm.” Maitimo raised one shoulder lightly, knocking Carnistir slightly askew from his perch. “Did you not lose?”

“No.” Carnistir rubbed at his face tiredly. His bruised and bloody nose was growing more tenderly painful by the moment, but the sheer amount of pastry which he had eaten made him drowsy. “I lost.”

“Ah.” Maitimo let his shoulder fall, and Carnistir was level again with it. “We should talk about your propensity for throwing unsolicited punches. Sometime soon.”

“I had a nightmare,” Carnistir confessed, though he yawned on the heel of the confession, and his brother only hummed.

“We can talk about that too,” he said, but when they reached the house Makalaurë was sitting muddy and miserable on the inside stairwell, and Carnistir was much too drowsy to bear witness to any conflict resolution which did not concern him as an offending party. He slipped away to his room. 

And at suppertime, when Carnistir’s mother inquired about his swollen face with concern, Carnistir lied very calmly about tripping down a handful of stairs. Maitimo looked at him reproachfully then, but they did not speak of his quarrel with Findaráto—nor his nightmare—again for a very long time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for some descriptions of gore

Carnistir’s palms were blue.

He witnessed the bookmaker eye them appraisingly as he took Carnistir’s coin, and Carnistir turned them out demonstratively further as he accepted his receipt. Carnistir was not necessarily betting anonymously (though he had forgone the  _ -finwë _ and put down his mother-name on the slip for a reason), but it could not hurt his cause to be mistaken for a common craftsman rather than a prince among the Noldor. Gambling was not forbidden by the laws of Ingwë nor his grandfather, but Carnistir reckoned his mother would have something to say about it, were she to be told.

(Tyelkormo, too, would have something to say about it, were he to suffer the same disappointed sighs and subtly cutting admonishments with which Nerdanel earned her sons’ mostly-unwavering obedience. Carnistir had made it clear, when accepting his brother’s money to bet in the pools, that if he was discovered, he would take Tyelkormo down with him. This was not to say that he  _ wished  _ to suffer his elder brother’s ire, if such a thing could be avoided.)

Additionally, Carnistir would prefer for the subject of his bets to remain ignorant to his machinations. It was an embarrassment enough to wager his and Tyelkormo’s money on his half-cousin, without the compounded humiliation of allowing him to  _ know  _ about it.

It was a shame, really, how well Angaráto had taken to the ring. Carnistir’s pockets appreciated his flush of victories, though Carnistir’s jaw ached to hope so earnestly for good things to befall an Arafinwëan in his recreational pursuits. Makalaurë had quipped recently that perhaps the new danger to Carnistir’s personal funds would teach him to wish less than ill on his least favorite relatives; so far, it had only brought Carnistir headaches and a suspicion that the decision to compromise his convictions would swiftly come back to bite him.

He took his place among the crowd, somewhere in the middle, and dipped his head to scrape dried blue dye from beneath his fingernails. His nails, too, were turned blue.

A hand clapped his shoulder. Carnistir recoiled, in surprise at first and then indignation, and as he turned his half-cousin cried, “Morifinwë! I did not know you would be here.” 

Carnistir suppressed a scowl and regarded Findaráto blandly. “I was in the vicinity,” he lied, and Findaráto beamed.

“Fortuitous,” replied his cousin happily, maneuvering around Carnistir so that he might clasp his hands in greeting. Carnistir allowed this with minimal quiet grace. “Angaráto is fighting tonight, though I am sure you have already noted that.”

“I had not,” lied Carnistir again. He tucked his bookmaker’s receipt further up his sleeve. “So this is how he’s taken to spending his free time?”

Findaráto hummed. “He is quite good at it,” he said. “Hasn’t lost a round in his last four matches, and I have heard that the bookies make better money on him every round, the longer that streak lasts.” He winked. “Half the people here cannot wait for him to lose, though I suspect you will never hear them say it.”

“Not about one of their princes,” replied Carnistir boredly. Findaráto laughed.

“They say plenty about princes,” he said. “There are so many of us now, it has become easy to pick favorites and least favorites.”

Carnistir did not inquire about where he ranked on that list, but he thought vaguely that Findaráto wished him to. His cousin was watching him now with an expectant smile, as if he suspected Carnistir had lied about his intentions here and wanted for him to know it, so that he might confess. It was a somewhat dangerous expression; Carnistir had nursed an inconvenient tendency toward honesty in the company of Findaráto since he was very young, and had found (now that he was somewhat less young) that his inclination for confession only increased with his annoyance. He bit down on the inside of his cheek.

“I suppose for every adored son there must be one who is not so,” mused Carnistir, meaning for the remark to be insouciant and instead finding that it sounded rather self-suffering. Findaráto appeared amused.

“By the design of the sons, I think,” he said. “More often than not.”

Carnistir refrained from a reply. There were points he could make regarding Angaráto’s seriousness and his quick temper which might inspire dislike in the public sector, but Carnistir thought that he and Findaráto were not quite speaking of Angaráto any longer, and he was loath to engage in circular talk even when the topic was not fun at his own expense.

“Excuse me,” he said, and he looked to his dyed hands again as he bowed his head and stepped away.

:

Carnistir’s palms were red.

He dreamt that he lay on a floor somewhere, with his right cheek pressed firmly to cool stone, and he observed his palms. The left of them was turned to his gaze, fingers crooked and slick with crimson dye; the right was also visible, by some feat of questionable comfort, with his arm twisted and caught beneath him and his palm turned upward. Two of his fingers were bent at an unnatural angle to the left. Carnistir had broken fingers before, and knew the sight and feel of them: though these fingers were most assuredly broken, he felt no pain in them.

Above him, there was singing.

It was lovely singing, really, though it was in a language which Carnistir was not sure he could speak, and for the briefest of moments he thought it might be Makalaurë’s voice which had begun it. Certainly it was sad enough a song for Makalaurë’s liking; even without perfect knowledge of the tongue in which it was sung, the mourning intent could be easily discerned. (Songs were like that, even Carnistir and his inexpert musical opinion had found.)

But the singer was silver-haired, black-eyed, and most definitely not Carnistir’s brother. For a moment Carnistir saw a tilt of Namo to his chin, a flutter of Manwë behind his black eyes; it seemed both outrageous and suitable in that brief second that Carnistir should be judged by both. Then the singer was a singer again, worldly and incarnate enough, and Carnistir’s head spun only naturally, and not as it was wont to do in the grand suffocating presence of the Valar.

The singing stranger wedged a heel against Carnistir’s hip, and with one certain shove rolled him onto his back. Carnistir blinked. There was something sticky caught in his lashes. His right arm was freed from beneath him now, but Carnistir was very tired and could not realistically think to use it.

“Lord Caranthir,” spoke the singer and thus, of course, ceased his singing. Carnistir meant to frown at this—with the song’s abrupt ending, something like fear began immediately to scratch at an unmarked door in his mind. Something like terrible pain took up quick residence in his chest. Additionally, he was fairly certain that the singer had addressed him by the wrong name. “I imagine you were not named for all this blood on your face.”

Ah, the stickiness of his eyelashes. Carnistir supposed this made sense, though he was yet uncertain about the reason for such blood. He meant to open his mouth to inquire in this vein; instead he coughed, wet, and the singer gave a quiet hum of bitter agreement. There was the sound, somewhere near, of clear and ringing metal.

“You will want to close your eyes,” reckoned the singer with his bright sword, and Carnistir meant to nod. (He was not sure he managed to nod.) There was something thick in his throat, like a stuck sob.

Carnistir did as he was advised.

:

“Smells like piss in here.” 

Carnistir had not heard the latch click, nor his brother enter the room. Like much of his family, he had inherited the Fëanorian tendency to ignore most external stimuli when presented with a topic or task of interest; kneeling and leaning over a vat to inspect the red dyebath, he had not heard Tyelkormo slip inside, or lean boredly against the wall. Only now did he scowl.

“I am busy,” he said irritably, and did not look up. “I left a note on the door.”

“I saw it,” replied Tyelkormo dismissively. He waved a hand in Carnistir’s peripheral. “I decided my business met the requirements.”

The note had provided a brief but comprehensive list of the circumstances in which disturbing Carnistir at his work would be permissible. He was fairly certain that it had stipulated only one possible scenario, and Tyelkormo had not intruded with the urgency of one requiring assistance in putting out a housefire. 

Carnistir sat back on his heels. He loosened the cotton cloth tied over his nose and mouth and discarded it down about his neck, so he could better communicate his annoyance.

“You do not appear to be on fire,” he remarked. His brother sneered.

“And you do not appear quite so busy.” He observed Carnistir’s stained hands—a muddy not-quite purple now, having worked with blue yesterday and crimson today—with vague disinterest. “You should wear gloves.”

Carnistir did wear gloves. Occasionally. He lifted his chin.

“Haruni did not wear gloves.”

“Not in the paintings she did not,” Tyelkormo agreed. “Atya does not tie his hair up in the forge according to the paintings either.” He quirked a brow. “But if you want someone to eroticize your craft for public viewing, Moryo, you have to first allow them into your workroom.”

“I do not want anyone eroticizing anything,” replied Carnistir sharply, and then wished he had not. His face warmed. Tyelkormo snorted a laugh.

“Then simply, I do not see the point.” At Carnistir’s frown, he shrugged. “I came for my money. Did we win?”

Carnistir tugged the cloth back over his nose. The smell of mordant and dye and wet wool had begun to make his head spin slightly, and he had work to finish before he resigned from the dye room with his irritation and an irrepressible headache. “He won,” he said. “But I met Findaráto there.”

Tyelkormo cursed cheerfully at their cousin’s expense. Carnistir drew the cover back on the blue dye vat, only in part to observe how the color was taking and otherwise as a means to encourage his brother to leave him alone. Tyelkormo wrinkled his nose, but to Carnistir’s disappointment did not retreat.

“You can get fiber dyed in the wool down at the craft markets,” he said. “I have seen it. I think your demeanor might improve if you spent less time inhaling metal sulfates and piss—”

“Fuck you,” replied Carnistir with little venom, and replaced the cover on the dye vat. “You can get your venison down at the butcher’s too.”

“That is different.” Tyelkormo folded his arms, now looking a twinge genuinely annoyed. “That is—”

“Sacred?” Carnistir interrupted, and watched a brief flush wash across Tyelkormo’s face. Carnistir was often grateful that at least he did not share Tyelkormo’s very pale coloring as inheritance from their grandmother—blushing and scrubbing dye from Carnistir’s hands might have been even more uniquely frustrating ordeals. Tyelkormo averted his eyes.

“Something like that,” he muttered. He rolled back his shoulders. “In any case,  _ that  _ is fun.”

“As I have no desire to ever drink blood in the woods, I must take your word for it.”

“Fuck you,” echoed Tyelkormo, though with slightly more antipathy than when Carnistir had said it. Perhaps this was accomplished by the baring of his sharper teeth. “What did Findaráto want?”

“To talk about least favorite princes,” replied Carnistir. He stood, closing his eyes briefly as his head swam. Tyelkormo snorted.

“Ass.”

“Yes.” Still, Carnistir found little desire within him to stoke further rage at the insult. He worried at the inside of his cheek with his teeth.

“My money,” Tyelkormo reminded him, and curtly Carnistir nodded. At the water basin on the counter he worked his hands into a pink soapy lather and suppressed the involuntary curl of his lip. Despite his apathy the previous day about the blue dye, he was loath now to leave the red stain on his palms. 

“Curvo wants in on the betting,” continued Tyelkormo when he turned, and now Carnistir did not curb his displeasure. He discarded the face-cloth beside the water basin and thinned his mouth to a disapproving line.

“I wasn’t aware that Curvo knew about the betting,” Carnistir said. “Particularly since I seem to remember your own participation being contingent on a vow of secrecy—”

“It is  _ Curvo  _ I’ve told, not any blonde child of Arafinwë, and  _ anyway,  _ I know you are taking cuts from the winnings—”

“As is my right to do so, as  _ I  _ am the one who faces both embarrassment and censure if anyone uncovers our business—”

“And you know very well then that Curvo’s participation means more coin for you to skim off the top,” pronounced Tyelkormo firmly. He grinned. “And since he knows now, I do not see any benefit to pretending he does not and further depriving him of the fun.”

“Should we invite the whole family to place their bets then?” Carnistir demanded. His brother stepped elegantly aside as Carnistir stalked to him and wrenched open the door.

“Best not to,” he hummed. “Telvo still hasn’t learned to keep a secret, and Kano would have little interest. Ammë would only be disappointed.”

Carnistir tightened the set of his teeth and said nothing.

“He also mentioned that you owe him, and that you would know what he meant by that when I said it.”

“Extortion,” snapped Carnistir. “Contemptible behavior all around—”

“ _ I  _ certainly do not know what he means by that, but I would be curious to learn—”

_ “Fine _ ,” Carnistir snapped. “But you can tell Curvo that when I am discovered, I will tell every son of Arafinwë that it was his idea.”

“He is shameless.” Cheerfully, Tyelkormo shrugged. “I doubt he will mind.”

That, Carnistir resolved, was something which he would not allow to become his own problem. 

But he was still irritable, and loath to see any red stain his hands any longer. Carnistir chewed his fingernails down to the bitter quick.

:

The coffeehouse was buzzing in the morning, and the noise was an unexpected comfort. Carnistir stirred a spoonful of honey into his cup and regarded his cousin evenly across the table.

“I think,” he said. He selected his words very particularly, despite the cushioning sound of the space around them. “I think that Angaráto will lose his next match.”

Findaráto blinked. Then he smiled, and hummed. “Really?” he mused, giving his own cup a stir. Findaráto had bought a single pastry at the counter, and it sat untouched now on a small plate between them—whether as a gift, bribe, or bait, Carnistir was unsure. “And why do you think that?”

Carnistir cleared his throat. “Well, I think,” he corrected himself solemnly, “that it will actually be in Angaráto’s  _ better interest _ to lose his next match.”

“Oh?” Fractionally, his cousin’s smile slipped. He no longer hummed. “Moryo, while I have not yet objected to you turning a profit from my brother’s sport—”

“Objected?” Carnistir snorted, to distract from his blush. He had not imagined that his dealings had remained a secret—Findaráto encountered him at the matches nearly as frequently as Carnistir deigned to go now, and Carnistir made no attempts to cloak his appearances in newfound interest in the sport, nor in sweetly kindled new friendship between himself and Angaráto. “On what would you have based your objections?”

“Opportunism,” suggested Findaráto, and again Carnistir snorted. “Perhaps on an argument of poor taste.”

“Hardly substantial enough complaints to hold ground against my money, when it comes down to it,” Carnistir pointed out. “And what about it has been in poor taste?”

“You and Angaráto are far from the closest of friends,” said Findaráto, and this was mostly a polite understatement. At a begetting day feast some few years ago, Angaráto had dared to call Carnistir  _ annoying _ , to which Carnistir had retorted—less than mildly—with a few choice insults to Angaráto’s familial line. While this incident had been relatively unsuccessful in driving a lasting wedge between Carnistir and Findaráto, it had more or less concretized a rivalry between Carnistir and his younger Arafinwëan cousin. “In any case, I have said that I have little actual quarrel with your placing bets, Moryo. Your desire to  _ fix a match _ , however—”

“Keep your voice down,” interrupted Carnistir levelly, and then lied: “I have suggested no such thing.”

“Perhaps not. Rather, you have suggested that it is in my brother’s better interest to lose his next fight, after a nine match winning streak which has already awarded you more gold than I care to think about.”

“Precisely that,” agreed Carnistir, though his fingers twitched against his cup in new nervousness. Findaráto was not taking as ambivalently to this plot as he had hoped. “Would you care for me to explain why?”

His cousin regarded him plainly from across the table. Then, lightly, Findaráto began to laugh.

“No,” he said—but still he laughed, pressing a demure hand to his mouth to disguise the sound. Carnistir’s face was very warm. “Absolutely not.”

“Ingoldo—”

“No.” Findaráto swallowed his laughter. Still, he regarded Carnistir without any contempt. The slope of his shoulders was easy. “And I believe you already knew what the answer would be, seeing as you came to  _ me  _ with this plot instead of Angaráto himself. Angamaitë would have broken your nose.”

“Well,” Carnistir muttered. He did not wish to speak of broken noses once more with the children of Arafinwë. “I had hoped you might convince him.”

“As you were convinced?” Findaráto looked gently amused again. “Perhaps, were you better spoken, and I less honorable, but you are no politician’s broker yet, Moryo.” He tapped a finger against the table. “Though Curufinwë is shaping up to be a decent politician himself, I see.”

“I was blackmailed,” said Carnistir sourly, and Findaráto turned out his palms with a smile.

“Case in point.”

Silence stretched between them. At the table nearby, a young _nís_ was talking loudly and animatedly about things better left to the privacy of one’s own marriage. Findaráto sipped from his cup, and smiled an irrepressible smile.

“In truth,” Carnistir said at last, quietly, “I came to you because I was counting on a no either way, but I thought that a refusal from Angaráto might only convince me to find another way to fix the odds.”

“Hm,” Findaráto agreed mildly. “Out of spite.”

“And that is far too much trouble to endure for the sake of Curvo’s conniving, and anyway my mother would have my hide for it—”

“And your father?” interrupted Findaráto, tilting his head.

“Would be disappointed,” replied Carnistir darkly, “that I was clumsy enough to get caught.”

“I see.” At the adjacent table, the  _ nís  _ and her sundry complaints escalated in volume and vitriol. Findaráto laughed, and then concealed his amusement behind his coffee in such a manner that, when the girl looked over to them in affront, it was Carnistir’s guilty blush she saw. She curled her lip, and Carnistir arranged his dyed hands rigidly atop the table. Findaráto continued, “I also imagine he would be disappointed that you confessed to it, before you had even committed the deed.”

“That too.” Carnistir set his teeth in annoyance. “In any case, it is irrelevant now.”

Findaráto nodded, and observed Carnistir’s quick-bitten nails with an unreadable expression. He said, tranquilly, “I have had the same dream for the past three nights now.”

Carnistir lifted his gaze. “About what?”

“It is at your brother’s wedding.” At Carnistir’s quirked brow, he elaborated. “Curufinwë’s.”

“So this is no telling of the future.” Curufinwë’s wedding had transpired earlier in the current year. He was young to be married, having somewhat recently come of age, and even more insufferable for that fact.

“No,” agreed Findaráto. He ran a fingernail along the swirling woodgrain of the table. “It is not a very long dream. There is a servant atop the stairs with a carafe, and one of your brothers is giving a toast, though in the middle of it the servant drops the carafe and—” He gestures vaguely. “—wine, all down the stairs.”

Carnistir waited. Findaráto spread his hands.

“It is the frequency of the dream, rather than the content, that draws attention,” he explained. Carnistir nodded.

“I see,” he said, slowly, though he did not. Findaráto shrugged. 

“Well, it could be nothing,” he said breezily. He sipped from his cup. “Sometimes, dreams are simply dreams.”

“Yes.” 

Findaráto smiled distantly, and they lapsed again into brief silence. Carnistir’s palms itched, and he thought perhaps he should have said something more encouraging, or perhaps more condescending, about Findaráto’s dream. He did neither to remedy the quiet now.

“This is for you,” Carnistir’s cousin said eventually, taking the plate with the pastry on it by the edge and sliding it before Carnistir. “As a consolation, and as a balm for your Curvo-related troubles.”

Carnistir accepted the plate. He thought of wine spilled down the stairs of his father’s house, and frowned.

“I will still bet against him,” Carnistir said, after a pause. “Angaráto, I mean.”

“Your odds are not good,” mused Findaráto. “His last opponent has beaten his next, in the first round too.” He tilted his chin. “And Angaráto beat  _ him  _ in the second.”

“I know the odds.” Carnistir lifted his lip derisively. He considered the honey-soaked cake before him. “You may tell him this, if you think it might further motivate him to win. But I will put my money down against him, come next week.”

Findaráto placed his chin in his hands and observed Carnistir sweetly. He asked, “Why? Out of spite?”

“Out of spite,” Carnistir agreed, and he stood to leave, taking the gifted pastry with him.

:

He stood in the lofty halls of Ilmarin, and sought his cousin’s face in the crowd. 

Previously, he had been sick on his knees before the gates of the great house. There had been a coil of his hair stuck fast to his damp cheek, and he had shivered, but only briefly. Maitimo had been the one to haul him to his feet, and Carnistir had nodded silently and taken the back of his gloved hand across his mouth matter-of-factly.

He had thought of wine, spilled down the stairs.

They had been made to disarm themselves in Ilmarin. Carnistir had cast his knife and his sword to the ground without voiced objection, and beside him Maitimo and Makalaurë had done the same. There was something dark and tacky on the palms of Carnistir’s riding gloves, and it smeared the hilts of both his weapons.

Carnistir had never seen blood in such quantities as he had this day. The metal smell of it was reminiscent of his brother returning from a hunt, back when he had been less secretive about his allegiance to Oromë in their father’s house, and that thought alone was enough to make his stomach churn. He drove his fingernails into the meat of his own palm. 

Carnistir sought and found Findaráto’s gaze among the feast-goers. By the ruddy tinge of his cousin’s cheeks, he had been drunk; by his drawn expression, he was fearful. Carnistir meant to communicate something similar with his own gaze—a carafe shattered before the door, gore spattering the wall, blood and bone fragments which had been tread and ground to dust against the stone floors—and he could not. His hands began to tremble. Carnistir withdrew his own gaze.

_ Wine, down the stairs. _

He might have laughed, if he had the breath in him. He might have taken up his knife and turned the blade before his cousin’s face, if he had the bravery in him. 

Carnistir thought that if he had been born with the gift of foresight, he might have dreamed something more useful than that. Perhaps in the language of bloodied hair and flesh, of shards of fragile bone caught glistening wet in the strands, perhaps detailing a  _ time _ , a sense of urgency, a name if not a face (for no face remained to be identified any longer), or anything else which might have allowed for the prevention of this terrible thing.

Something spoke to him quietly in Findaráto’s defense. Blood had never been spilled in this way in Aman. Perhaps the princes of the Noldor had simply not possessed the language to dream things like this, in all their horror.

Carnistir lifted his gaze, and when he found Findaráto again, his cousin was not looking at him at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> credit for the pugilist Angrod (who earned his epesse from the sport) headcanon to theoppositeofprofound on tumblr! (i think--it's been a while since i've seen the post, but i'm fairly certain it's theirs. if you know differently, i'd be glad to hear it!)
> 
> you can find me on tumblr at batshape.tumblr.com


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